It's really Arms Storage Amendment

State Rep. David Harris had a letter in the Feb. 27 Daily Herald in which he wrote that reasonable firearm restrictions do not violate the Second Amendment and that banning bump stocks is a reasonable prohibition, and that no one's rights are being infringed.

I totally agree with him. If we look back to our Founding Fathers' reason for enacting the Second Amendment, we will learn that the right to keep and bear arms is very limited and is not even applicable today.

At that time, the members of the militia each resided in their own family homes, and we did not have forts and armories in which their weapons could be stored. So each member of the militia had to keep his own weapon in his own home, and then when the members of the militia were summoned to join together for combat, each member took his own weapon with him as he left his home.

Thus, the purpose of the Second Amendment was to assure that each member of the militia had the right to keep his weapon in his home, and that right was not to be infringed. And it would be better had political scientists and teachers called the Second Amendment the "Arms Storage Amendment."

We should recognize the reasoning for the amendment, and we should not use it today to justify the carrying of armed weapons. Rather, our legislatures are completely free today to regulate and impose restrictions on the carrying of arms. And let us also remember that the so-called "right to self-defense" simply was not the purpose for the Second Amendment when it was enacted. The Second Amendment was an Arms Storage Amendment, and that's all the Founding Fathers of our country intended with that amendment.

Theodore M. Utchen

Wheaton